


Wear it on your finger

by AgapantoBlu



Series: Short-fics from Agap's Schrödinger Tumblr [1]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Aaron Centric, Engagement, F/M, I'll fill up this fandom with that tag, M/M, Multi, Personal Growth, The Cousins love and support each others
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-18 17:56:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16999845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgapantoBlu/pseuds/AgapantoBlu
Summary: Aaron finds something hidden in Nicky's drawer and strives to be better.





	Wear it on your finger

**Author's Note:**

> Just so you know, this is all Tumblr's December 17th 2018's fault.

 

First of all, it’s all Nicky’s fault. Aaron wouldn’t even be checking in his drawer if his cousin didn’t have the bloody habit of hoarding other people’s stuff. What use does he even have for Aaron’s shirts?, it’s not like they fit him!

Nonetheless, Aaron is missing a shirt that Katelyn got for him and Nicky will be in class for another two hours so he’s searching in his drawer. He’s pushing pants and shirts in insufferably obnoxious colors all over the place looking for his plain navy shirt, when his hand finds something and sends it hitting the side of the drawer.

It takes him a moment to find and understand the black velvet box.

His heart does a complex thing. Aaron’s not sure he likes it.

He shouldn’t be touching that, he knows it instinctively the moment his hand does grab it, yet he can’t help it. The box is soft under his fingertips and there’s a voice in his brain saying that this might actually hurt Nicky; Aaron touching this without permission might be the time that his cousin doesn’t answer the pain with just a smile and a carry-on wagon of blabbering.

He opens it anyway.

There’s a ring inside. His heart does the thing again, and his brain snarls at him that _what was he expecting?!_

The mean edge of the voice makes him flinch to himself and turn, guiltily, to check the door and make sure nobody is sneaking on him. Luckily, Matt is over at Dan’s and Aaron can count on a single hand the times anyone from the other room ventured here.

(On a single finger, honestly. It was Kevin. He came to complain that Andrew and Neil were bullying him, and Matt closed the door on his face. Of course fucking Nicky re-opened it and let him in for a videogaming session.)

It is, objectively, a beautiful jewel. Aaron is no expert, but the band is in rose gold and chiseled finely with a motive of sleek leaves that culminates in what looks like a blooming flower, except that the slightly open petals firmly carry a transparent stone. If it is a diamond, that must have cost some because it’s not exactly tiny, though not lavishly big either. It’s soft looking and pretty and perfectly lucid, shiny like a pearl.

This is an engagement ring if Aaron has ever seen one.

There seems to be something carved in, from what Aaron can see, so he pulls it out and rolls it between his fingers to read.

It says, in simple cursive: _Regardless - Erik - 16/04/2003_

Aaron jerks, and almost loses the ring to his own surprise, because 2003? Nicky was twenty back then, and - he mentally wrestles the numbers around from the European order - April was when Andrew killed Tilda. Before Nicky dropped everything to come and get them.

He thinks he knows now, how a deer feels when he sees the headlights approaching.

It’s silly, honestly. Nicky introduced Erik as his future husband to basically everyone, but Aaron had just assumed it was his dramatic streak speaking, not that-

Regardless, Erik had written in the ring. If he’d had it done after Tilda’s death, it meant they both were probably already talking about Nicky moving back to the States and staying for who knows how long, potentially years. It meant that regardless was a bigger promise than it could seem.

“Nicky was going to get married,“ he tries it on his tongue because it’s crazy to think about. Nicky can’t even stick to doing all his homework, he gets bored after half an Exy match on TV, he starts complaining about fatigue and smelliness when he isn’t even’t halfway done with his exercises at practice. Marriage is a commitment that Aaron struggles picturing on him.

Except, the voice in his brain says, that Nicky has stuck to the same boyfriend ( _fiancé_ ) since he was seventeen, and he is turning twenty-four this year. Except that Nicky came back to his cousins and stuck around through high-school and is sticking through college, because he promised he’d be here until they’ll be ready to start their own lives without killing each others, themselves or someone else. (He might have failed a bit on the last one, actually, but he’s stuck around nonetheless.) Except he’s texted Josten for days, multiple times a day, until he stopped being weird about his phone.

Maybe commitment is not something Nicky is so bad at, after all.

But four years? _Regardless_ of four years, probably even longer, probably six or seven? That’s not something someone says _regardless_ to, something one decides to ignore and propose anyway. Four years. People change in four years. How did Erik look at Aaron’s disaster cousin and thought, yes, I want to marry this clumsy no-brain-mouth-filter dumbass of a man and I will want to do it six years from now too?

The ring feels hot and heavy in Aaron’s fingers. And when did his hands start shaking? _Fuck_.

Carefully, maybe too much, he puts the ring back in its case and close the lid. He pushes it back to where he found it and roughly pulls a couple shirts over it for cover. Then he slams the drawer close.

He feels sweating and it isn’t even that warm, in the empty room.

There is a mostly clean shirt on his bed, so he grabs that, puts it on and hastily calls Katelyn as he is already walking out.

 

 

They end up at the ice-cream parlor, he and his girlfriend. She was so enthralled with the story of his discovery that two drops of melted chocolate left lines of the hand holding her cone.

“That’s-“ she shapes her lips carefully around the words and Aaron remembers the way his own fingers held softly on the ring. He doesn’t know what of the whole matter seems to require such gentleness, but it feels necessary and unavoidable somehow, like an instinct that couldn’t be fought. “It’s really amazing, Aaron.“

He wonders why the first word he can think of is _reckless_. _Idealistic_ , at the very best. “It makes no sense. Why would they do that?”

His voice is coming out lower and more uncertain than he’d like to, but Katelyn doesn’t comment. Instead, she places her clean hand on his, where it’s balled at the side of his abandoned cup. How ironic, he thinks, when ice-cream seems more like a coping mechanism of his brother’s than his own.

“You know why they did it, honey,” she says. When Nicky uses that word, it’s usually somehow biting, somehow sarcastic. When Katelyn says it, it’s sweet and golden. She shrugs like it’s no big deal. “They love each others, Aaron. Even I have only ever met Erik once and know that it’s true.”

He wants to yell, then he wants not to say, then he ends up whispering, because Kate is the only one he trusts with his insecurities: “Love doesn’t keep people together.”

Love didn’t keep seventeen-year-old Nicky from leaving fourteen-year-old Aaron alone. Love didn’t keep Andrew from turning cold and frigid to Aaron’s mere presence. Love didn’t keep his mother from going out for another drink, another fix, again and again and again.

Love didn’t keep Katelyn to his side when Josten decided to meddle with Aaron’s fucking life.

Kate knows what he means. Her face is less open, less happy now, but it holds the somberness of someone who knows they made the right choice for as hard as it was.

“Effort does, though,” she offers. “Effort and hard work and commitment and determination. And love, yes, it too, but never alone.” She picks his fist up to kiss it gently, and there’s a chocolate stain in the shape of her lips on his knuckles now. “Nicky and Erik put all of them in that ring. You and I put all of them in every Wednesday you spend talking your problems out with your brother and every time I walk in front of Andrew’s dorm room to get to yours.” She brushes her thumb on the back of his hand, careful not to smudge the mark. “I don’t know if we would have resisted the tests Erik and Nicky passed in these years, but we passed our own and that’s what counts. They passed theirs and they’re moving forward. You can’t say it won’t work because it wouldn’t for us. As a matter of fact, for them, it has been working for four years already.”

Aaron pulls her in to kiss her. He doesn’t say, _I love you_ , or, _I would try the same for you_. She kisses him back like she knows anyway.

 

 

He doesn’t tell Nicky he knows of the ring, but sometimes he catches a sparkle on his ring finger even if there’s nothing when he looks better. He tries to picture Nicky wearing the ring proudly, he can easily imagine him bragging about it, and he wonders why it’s sealed in its box instead.

He shifts, hesitates, bites his lips, but tells Andrew at Bee’s, three weeks later.

Andrew doesn’t react like Aaron would expect, all considered. He knows by now that his brother - denying it all he wants to - is scared of losing the people of his tight circle and that Erik’s looming presence, ready to snatch Nicky an whole ocean of distance away, is among the biggest paranoias he’s working on. All considered, he was expecting Andrew to freeze, to close off, to get mad; perhaps a part of him had even expected him to revert back to thinking Nicky never cared about them enough to consider staying.

Andrew taps his fingers on the side of his cup, instead, and looks at Bee then.

She smiles gently. “Offering congratulations would be a good start,” she says, and Aaron has learnt that this teasing side of hers is part of why Andrew likes her honestly.

Indeed, he scoffs at her. “I might offer my condolences to Klose, at best.”

“Then you would have to put up with Nicky’s whining for a week at the very least, you know.“

“Dammit,“ Andrew says, deadpan.

Aaron sips on his tea. “I wonder if there is a reason why he’s not wearing it.”

“I’ll give you three per day,“ Andrew side-eyes him. “The homophobic comments his cousin makes to him.”

“My comments never made him stop making filthy jokes or wearing all of his innuendo shirts!,“ Aaron retorts, suddenly defensive.

Bee’s look in his direction says she knows his rage stems from his own doubt, from him having already considered this but not wanting to admit it. “Have you thought,-” she says, gentle, “-that perhaps his jokes and shirts don’t matter to him as much as the promise with Erik? Maybe Nicky can take his playfulness being attacked, but he’s not comfortable with people making less of something that is honestly so important for him.”

Aaron shuffles in his seat again. He can feel Andrew’s eyes drilling in the side of his head, following him like a bird of prey’s rather than a fox’s.

He wishes it was Katelyn in front of him, but still he forces himself to say, “I wouldn’t say anything about _that_.”

It’s all he can promise now. Making disgusted comments, taking his distance from his cousin’s openness about his sexuality is by now a knee-jerk reaction from Tilda’s close-fisted rants and Luther’s snobbish preaching. He doesn’t even know why he’s still following them anymore. But it’s there, automatic in his brain, and sometimes Nicky is so much.

He’s trying to be better, he is. He just fails lots.

That’s not the greatest excuse he’s ever offered, and Andrew shakes his head silently, disbelieving, at him. When Aaron turns to him, his brother is just looking at the mug he’s picking up and bringing to his lips. “Words with no actions to back them up are useless.”

Aaron wonders if he’ll ever stop bruising from Andrew’s lapidary judgment. He wants to tell him, only the guiltless should throw the first stone, but he’s not sure his knives-carrying brother would appreciate Bible preaching in his safe place.

“I can’t tell him I saw the ring,“ he says instead. “It’s- I don’t know. It feels like I read his secret journal.“

Andrew stops mid-sip. “Nicky’s gay enough that he probably has a secret journal.”

Aaron groans, because he’s pretty sure he caught Nicky shoving a glittery notebook, with heart-shaped lock to match, between his mattress and the wall; and that he has no intention on snooping in. “He probably writes about his conquests at Eden’s and Kevin’s ass in there.“ Bee tilts his head at him. “I’m not being an asshole! It’s just true!”

“He’s right on this,” Andrew says, and Aaron shouldn’t feel this good for his brother’s back up, but he does.

 

 

Nicky is playing videogames with Matt and cheating blatantly. They are fighting for dominance in Mario Kart and Nicky keeps accidentally bumping into Matt in real life to make him mess with the controls.

It’s Saturday, they won a game and Thea came to watch them, which means that literally everyone is relaxed and in a good mood. Andrew is sitting on the window frame smoking and Neil is cross-legged on the desk in front of him, chatting away quietly. The three seniors are on the duvet that Allison hustled from her bed to their room’s floor and she’s waiting for her nail polish to dry while Renee is doing Dan’s hands in a bright shade of orange. Thea took one of the beanbags and pulled Kevin on her lap; they are switching between talking shit about each others’ strategies and sucking faces with no pattern within human comprehension. The freshman are somewhere causing troubles, probably.

Katelyn is curled against Aaron’s side, on the other beanbag, and that’s probably why he manages to clear his throat when Nicky pushes against Matt and makes a comment about his biceps. Instead of the ugly comment buzzing in his head, he says, “Cut it out, Nicky, or I’ll tell on you on your _fiancé_.”

Nicky’s face whips in his direction, eyes and mouth open wide. His character, on the screen, happily hauls herself off a cliff.

Matt’s slows down as he spies on them from the corner of his eyes.

Aaron knows everybody is looking at him, and he can feel the nervous energy itch to turn into aggression.

Katelyn fakes slapping his chest. “Oh, come on, babe,” she says, giggling. “I’m sure Erik understands that all is fair in Mario Kart.”

“Amen,“ Dan hurriedly adds from the floor and Nicky’s mouth closes, but his gaze stays on Aaron’s face, never mind that he’s staring at Nicky’s Princess Peach’ car being slammed every other side whenever another runner hits it on the way to the finishing line.

“ _Fiancé_ , uh?“ Allison waves her fingers and watches the white paws painted on orange background on her nails. “Careful, Matt, looks like you and Dan risk not being the first to tie the knot.”

“There should be a ring, to be an engagement.” Aaron jerks, turning, when Andrew’s voice shuts up everyone in the room. Of course he’s not looking at them, just at the campus out of the window.

Nicky makes a humming sound. When Aaron looks back at him, he’s looking at his socked feet and wriggling his toes. Then he looks up and whines at the TV. “Cheating!” he yells. “I want a rematch!”

Matt laughs good-naturedly, if still a bit unsure. “Fine by me.”

“Let me go to the bathroom real quick and then I’ll kick your heterosexual ass, fine as it might be!”

Aaron rolls his eyes, and moves to kiss Katelyn’s neck instead. A silent, _thank you_. She brushes his hair and kisses his temple, _I always have your back_.

Nicky returns two minutes later. He makes a detour from the bathroom to the bedroom and Aaron holds his breath. His cousin emerges with no fanfare.

Nobody but he, his brother and his girlfriend notice, but there’s a gleam to Nicky’s ring finger which is no illusion this time around.

Nicky picks the controller up and screams vengeance, but he looks at Aaron from the corner of his eyes and Aaron looks down to his ring once, just enough to let him know he noticed it, before whipping his eyes back to the screen. That’s enough for one night.

Andrew stumps his cigarette out and closes the window. Neil offers him the Whiskey bottle he stole from the alcohol stash and Andrew takes a gulp of it and sits on the desk, rather than going to the rooftop.

If Aaron’s learnt something, is that his brother likes watching drama unfold, the asshole, so he watches him fire a rapid text. He’s not surprised when Renee’s phone beeps just a second later.

Renee fiddles with her phone, and Aaron sees Allison shifting to read above her shoulder. He can catch two words only, and one is probably Nicky so the other might be finger or hand. Anyway, Allison’s head turns so fast and her eyes zero on the ring.

She screams and points. Soon enough, chaos ensues.

Aaron groans and throws his head back, Katelyn giggling in his ear.

He just hopes he doesn’t have to stand these dramatics every time he decides to take a step in fixing things with his family.

 

**Author's Note:**

> If it's still there, my Tumblr is @agapantoblu


End file.
